Tears of Debateable Existence
by Marvelgeek42
Summary: The life of Myrtle Elizabeth Warren had never been easy or pleasant. Her afterlife was not much better.
1. Life

**Written for The Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition, Season Four (Round 10)**

 **Team: Puddlemere United**

 **Position: Seeker**

 **Prompt: Myrtle Warren (Ghost)**

 **Word Count without A/N: 1,023 (Google Docs)**

* * *

The life of Myrtle Elizabeth Warren had never been easy or pleasant.

She had been born as the fifth child and third daughter to a poor family. Both of her parents were factory workers and they worked so long that Myrtle barely knew them. She was raised by older siblings and her grandfather who had to stay home as he had lost his arm in an accident around a month before she was born.

For her entire childhood, Myrtle had been the odd one out—the freak—of her family. Yet, at the same time, she was rarely noticed by anyone outside it. Who cared about third daughters of factory workers after all?

It was pretty clear that her older siblings were content where they were and had no hopes of escaping, of moving up the social ladder. Myrtle, however, wanted more and knew that the most important thing was knowledge.

She tried her best to learn as much as possible, but it wasn't even close to as much as she desired. Her mother and sisters taught her how to sew, wash and everything else they deemed important to know for a girl. A future mother, wife and worker.

Hooray.

* * *

Things changed when she turned eleven. She got a letter from a school no one she knew—and asked—had ever heard of. Everyone thought it a joke until a teacher—Professor Merrythought—arrived to explain things, thus sufficiently proving that it wasn't.

She was different, yes, but at the same time, she was one of many. After all, there was a whole society of people like her.

This was her chance to escape a boring life! She has the opportunity to learn magic! No one else in her family had ever learned something like that before.

She begged her father and mother that she could attend, and, after the subject of the tuition had been settled, she was allowed.

* * *

Before Myrtle arrived at Hogwarts, she knew next to nothing about the school. She did know what subjects were taught, what they expected her to bring and wear, but she didn't know the truly important things.

She had no background knowledge, no idea how their society worked. Did they have the same values? What were their views on things like religion or the role of women? Were there any important laws she wasn't aware of?

Those were only a few of the countless questions that bothered her for months. She had no chance to get an answer to any of them until she arrived at Hogwarts in September. Her family coluld neither afford the additional books that she would need to read to learn more, nor for her to travel to London, to the only place she knew of where she could simply _ask_.

Myrtle knew that—she didn't even bring up the topic with her parents.

When she stood in the Great Hall with the other first years on September first and listened to the Sorting Hat's songs about the four Houses, she immediately knew where she belonged.

 _It seems you already made your mind up, didn't you? Do not worry, I could not dare to put anyone with such a thirst for knowledge anywhere but_ "RAVENCLAW!"

* * *

It didn't take Myrtle long to realize that, as much as the two worlds were different from each other, they were still the same when it came to certain things.

People in general paid way too much attention to outward appearances.

Perhaps she had glasses, perhaps she had gained a few pounds—the food was just so good and she couldn't let it waste. Not after the hunger she had been forced to endure—but that should not mean she should be treated any less.

Except, for some reason Myrtle would never comprehend, that was how the world worked.

Olive Hornby was beautiful, any fool could see that.

Myrtle Warren wasn't and that was just as obvious.

Oddly enough that seemed to give Olive permission to constantly harass and belittle her to the point that no one wanted to be Myrtle's friend.

It came to the point where she spent every free minute either hiding, sobbing or a combination of both.

There she was, in a castle full of people like her and yet still incredibly lonely.

* * *

On the day of her Death—not that she suspected anything like that before it happened—Myrtle happened to hide in the bathroom on the first floor.

She heard a noise, investigated and then nothing for a few minutes.

 _I died_ , she realized. _This can't be the end._

And so she returned to the world of the living, though no longer one of them.

She stayed with her body, not willing to leave it alone. There was just too much that could happen.

Once Olive Hornby of all people had found her—oh how Myrtle had laughed at her expression—her parents were called.

To her amazement, they actually came. She wouldn't have thought they had the time.

* * *

Myrtle had started questioning her choice to become a ghost not long after she made it.

After all, once Olive Hornby moved very close to the entrance of Ministry, she couldn't hunt her anymore. And no one else had really deserved it quite as much as she did, thus Myrtle had absolutely no purpose.

She was no house ghost like the Grey Lady or the Fat Friar. She was not funny like Peeves was. She was simply one ghost of many, lost in the crowd.

Myrtle wasn't happy with that. She wanted to stand out, to be special, but not this.

So she started hiding in the very place of her death. How poetic, how morbid.

* * *

Myrtle didn't notice a lot outside of her sheltered bathroom. She barely realized that students came and went. To her, all faces looked the same. Sure, there were differences, but there was one thing they all shared and that was the most important of all.

All of their faces showed annoyance, disgust or—in increasingly rarer cases—pity when they looked at her.

It didn't take long until she despised her afterlife.

So she cried. Every day and night, she cried tears of debatable existence. How lonely, how sad.

* * *

 **Please tell me what you think!**

 **~Marvelgeek42**


	2. After

**Word Count: 1,000**

* * *

There were several decades between the day of her death and the date when it finally happened; when someone was finally genuinely nice to her without it being a plan of any scheme or something. Because that had occasionally happened during her lifetime and she did not want any more of it in her afterlife.

She was very surprised it was _him_ out of all the people who had walked through these halls over the years.

The person in question was Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived, the Golden Boy of Gryffindor Tower, and the Heir of Slytherin, though that last one was pretty recent.

Myrtle did listen to the gossip of the other ghosts as well as the rare students that entered her bathroom. She knew what kind of person everyone thought he was.

Arrogant and attention seeking, a spoiled brat.

Only, he wasn't. Not really.

He was neither of those things. Harry Potter was actually really nice and sweet and considerate.

And she would know. The boy and his two less nice friends spent the majority of their time in her toilet brewing some sort of potion after all. She only found out what the potion in question was a bit later, when they took it.

Harry occasionally—once every two weeks or so—visited her without the others and spent the time talking to Myrtle.

That felt really nice.

* * *

At the end of the school year, Harry Potter did not die when he was fighting whatever was hidden down the tunnel hid by the sink.

He did not join her, which she supposed was alright. Harry deserved to live a long life full of happiness, not whatever it was that she was experiencing.

He stopped coming over to her toilet. He didn't just stop to brew the Polyjuice Potion, oh no, she would have been more than fine with that, he completely stopped turning up in her toilet.

He forgot about her, left her all alone yet again.

Myrtle was always alone with herself without Harry.

Somehow, this felt infinitely worse than it did before.

* * *

At least we was not rude to her when she visited him two years later while he was trying to solve the clue hidden in the golden egg in that tournament.

It could have been a lot worse, Myrtle supposed.

He didn't insult her—at least not to her face—he did not try to make her leave—not really, she would have left if he had really wanted it—and he never tried to exorcise her—people had done that before.

Harry might not like her and merely tolerated her presence, but it was better than outright hatred by far.

* * *

Another boy started visiting her a couple of years later.

He was almost the total opposite of Harry in both appearance and character. The boy was called Draco.

No matter how much she tried to stop herself, Myrtle got her hopes up. Maybe this time it would not end the same way as the last. The boys were different enough from each other.

He visited more frequently and seemed just as desperate for help as she was.

It was really tragic and depressing that he seemed to be the only person she ever managed to really connect to when he seemed to be complementing horrible things.

Not whatever it was he did that ruined him, more ruining the thing's chances of ruining his life. And anyone else's too.

Myrtle should probably have tried to get him some help, but she didn't. She was too afraid that he would leave her alone if she did.

Perhaps they could be lonely ghosts together.

* * *

At the end of the year, Draco left and he never returned.

Everything had once again been a part of a larger plan, a scheme that involved her cooperation.

How could she have expected anything different at this point when every previous experience in both live and death proved her that her being happy simply would not happen?

She should have known better after close to a century of experience! How could she have let herself be fooled by a few nice words once again?

* * *

A couple of decades later, three children tried to befriend her. She was too cautious to let that happen again, especially as two out of the three were the children of Harry and Draco and the third was the child of one of Harry's friends—the girl, Hermione—and one of Draco's—the quiet one, Theodore.

That did not exactly inspire her trust in the three eleven-year-olds.

The three however, persisted. They really tried to befriend her.

She never dared to ask why. What if it turned out to be a part of a scheme yet again and not a genuinely nice gesture?

* * *

The three of them—Albus, Rose, and Scorpius—were different from everyone else so far, as they never really left.

Maybe it was because they were Ravenclaw—not Gryffindor, not Slytherin—but they kept visiting her over all seven years of their education.

Sometimes there were long times between their visits, during which Myrtle worried that they were just the same as everyone else in her existence.

They always returned, sooner or later.

And they even stayed as teachers. Rose taught Charms, Scorpius Ancient Runes, and Albus the newly mandatory—and finally accurate—Muggle Studies.

Of course Myrtle knew that it wasn't simply because of her, but she liked to pretend it was.

* * *

Once Rose, Albus, and Scorpius was old enough to leave the school forever, she felt herself ready to leave too.

She had achieved in over a century of afterlife what she had wanted in her dozen years of life.

Myrtle Warren was finally loved and appreciated. She was no longer known as Moaning Myrtle. She was no longer crying tears of debateable existence.

She was finally ready to let go, to step into the light.

It was better than she expected.

Heaven—because this was where she ended up, somehow—was everything she could remember wanting and desiring in her entire existence on Earth—both before and after her death.

* * *

 **Please tell me what you think!**

 **~Marvelgeek42**


End file.
